Curso The Never-Ending Story

• Read and practice writing fiction, nonfiction, or dramatic writing.
• Deepen theoretical knowledge of character, structure, setting, and pov, and how these elements work together to make a meaningful, “never-ending” story.
• Learn to read like an editor: noticing creative choices in a work, including how they affect a text and how they could be adjusted.
• Gain feedback on work in progress.

1. Why do we write: Inspiration, idea generation, brainstorming. What makes a story? Beginning, Middle, and End
2. POV and Setting exploration. Close readings and class exercises
3. POV and Setting exploration cont’d. Workshop one
4. Character exploration. Workshop one cont’d
5. Character exploration cont’d. Workshop one cont’d
6. Structure exploration. Workshop two
7. Structure exploration cont’d. Workshop two cont’d
8. Full novel analysis. Workshop two cont’d

• About half of class time will be devoted to readings of selected literature, discussions on craft and form, and informal exercises, in order to learn tools of creative writing.
• The other half will be spent in workshop, in which you will submit your own writing on a formal schedule and engage in thorough, critical discussions on each work-in-progress as we describe how the work currently functions and brainstorm on what it might do differently.
• By being attentive, thoughtful, and passionate readers of others’ work, we will become better readers of our own drafts, and, ultimately, better writers of the work we dream to produce.

*Students will read one full novel, The Vegetarian by Han Kang, and watch one feature film, Chungking Express by Wong Kar-wai. They must access these works on their own.

All other readings are excerpts or short texts, and will be provided digitally in class.

• Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Apollo

• Baldwin, James. Go Tell It on the Mountain

• Borges, Jorge Luis. The Garden of Forking Paths

• Cron, Lisa. Wired for Story

• Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

• Evenson, Brian. Windeye

• Gass, William. Order of Insects

• Han Kang. The Vegetarian (full novel)

• Jamison, Leslie. The Empathy Exams

• Johnson, Denis. Emergency

• Joyce, James. Araby

• Kafka, Franz. A Message from the Emperor

• Keret, Etgar. What of This Goldfish Would You Wish?

• La Plante, Alice. The Making of a Story

• Li, Yiyun. Things in Nature Merely Grow

• McKee, Robert. Story

• Salesses, Matthew. Craft in the Real World

• Tower, Wells. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

• Wong Kar-wai. Chungking Express (full feature film)

• Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own